Instagram is a school bully who stole everyone’s lunch and then died of obesity.
Last Tuesday, it was reported that Instagram is developing a feature called "IG Candid Challenges" where at a random time every day, users who opt-in to the feature will receive a notification prompting them to take a picture of whatever it is they are doing at that moment and post it to the service within two minutes for all of their friends to see.
Original, right?
Somebody please explain to me why Mark Zuckerberg insists on painting himself as a comic book supervillain in seemingly every product decision he makes.
At the risk of stating the obvious, this feature is a clear ripoff of BeReal, a red-hot social media app that is currently the top free app on the Apple App Store. I'm not even going to explain how BeReal works because it does exactly what I just described above. And because the concept bores the crap out of me anyways.
First they came for Snapchat Stores, and I did not speak out. Then they came for TikTok's vertical video, and I did not speak out. Then they came for BeReal...
But what I found most funny about this report was that it's now clear as day how Instagram is going to die: it's going to get too bloated for its own good. Instagram could slap Instagram Stories into their UI and not complicate the user experience too much. But add in a significantly higher emphasis on vertical video, sprinkle in IG Candid Challenges, tack on the eventual much greater focus on the Shopping tab because Facebook needs to continue growing Instagram's toppling somehow, and you're left with an absolute dopamine dumpster fire. Part of me wants to believe they'll find a way to adapt the app's design to make all of this fit together seamlessly, but then I remember that would require original thought and I lose hope. The joy of Instagram was in its simplicity, and if the chaotic UI of the Facebook app is anything to judge by, those days of simplicity are over.
Maybe I'm not giving Instagram enough credit. Maybe this will all work out. Or maybe we really are getting to the point where the bully has eaten a few too many lunches for his own good.
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